"reverence.

1757.

29.

❝go on smoothly and dully, and was fated to descend to his early "write history and politics, and grave. Smollett was toughly "are praised: men, sir, who, had fighting for his every-day's ex"they been bred cobblers, would istence; and Johnson had "all their lives have only mended but the other day been "shoes, but never made them." tenant Æt. of a spongingOn which George makes up his house. Only a few months bemind. "Finding that there was fore, on the author of the English "no great degree of gentility Dictionary presenting himself to "affixed to the character of an bookseller Wilcox with a plan "usher, I resolved to accept his for obtaining livelihood as a "proposal; and having the highest writer, the other, eyeing his "respect for literature, hailed the powerful frame with a significant “antiqua mater of Grub-street with shrug, told him he had better I thought it my buy a porter's knot. No man "glory to pursue a track which throve that was connected with "Dryden and Otway trod before letters unless also connected with "me." The difference of fact their trade and merchandise, and fiction here will be, that and, like Richardson, able to glory had nothing to do with the print books as well as write matter. Griffiths and glory were them. not to be thought of together. "Had some of those," cried The sorrowful road seemed the Smollett in his bitterness, "who last that was left to the hero of "were pleased to call themselves my narrative: and he entered it. "my friends, been at any pains On this "track," then, trod by "to deserve the character, and few successfully, trod happily by "told me ingenuously what I had fewer still, though not on that "to expect in the capacity of an account less freely or fearlessly "author, when I first professed chosen by men of genius, we see "myself' of that venerable fraGoldsmith in his twenty-ninth "ternity, I should in all probayear, with only the liberty of "bility have spared myself the choice that was left him by sheer "incredible labour and chagrin I necessity, calling after calling hav-"have since undergone." "I ing slipped from him, launched "don't think," said Burke, in for the first time. The unusual one of his first London letters gloom of the prospect might have to his Irish friends, written seven damped the ardour of a more years before this date, "there is cheerful adventurer. "as much respect paid to a man of Fielding had died in shattered "letters on this side the water as hope and fortune, at what should "you imagine. I don't find that have been his prime of life, three "Genius, the

years before. Within the next 'rathe primrose, which forsaken dies,' Two years, poor and mad, Collins

Oliver Goldsmith's Life and Times. 1.

Preface to the Regicide.

5

"is patronised by any of the ledged by offices in the state; as "nobility... writers of the first long as Prior's wit could be paid "talents are left to the capricious by an embassy, or Addison's

"patronage of the public. humour win its way to a secre1757. "After all, a man will make taryship; while not Swift only, Et. 29. "more by the figures of but Steele and Congreve and "arithmetic than the figures of Gay sat at ministers' tables, and "rhetoric, unless he can get into were not without weight in their "the trade wind, and then he councils; though its slavery might "may sail secure over Pactolean not be less real than in later "sands."* years, yet all outwardly went It was in truth one of those well with it. Though flat apostacy times of transition which press then might lift literature in rank, hardly on all whose lot is cast in while unpurchasable indepenthem. The patron was gone, dence depressed it into ruin; and the public had not come. though, for the mere hope of gain The seller of books had as yet to be got from it, mere nobodies exclusive command over the were worth propitiating by digdestiny of those who wrote them: nified public employments; still, and he was difficult of access; it was esteemed by the crowd, without certain prospect of the because not altogether shut out trade wind, hard to move. "The from prosperity and worldly sta"shepherd in Virgil," wrote John- tion. "The middle ranks," said son to Lord Chesterfield, "grew Goldsmith_truly, in speaking of "at last acquainted with Love, that period, * "generally imitate "and found him a native of the "the great, and applauded from "rocks." Nor had adverse cir-"fashion if not from feeling." cumstances been without their But when another state of things effect upon the literary charac- succeeded; when politicians had ter itself.** Covered with the too much shrewdness to despise blanket of Boyse, and sheltered the help of the pen and too little by the night-cellar of Savage, it intellect to recognise its clains had less forfeited its honour and or influence, when it was thought self-respect than as the paid client that to strike at its dignity was of the ministries of Walpole and to command its more complete Henry Pelham. As long as its subservience, when undisguised political services were acknow-corruption had become the agent of all political intrigue, and votes

* Letter to his school-fellow, Matthew were never wanting to the minis

Smith.

**If any one would see a sketch, by ter who would give hard cash in the hand of a master, of what the career return for them; Literature, or of the man generally was who lived by the craft so called, was thrust literature in this wretched interval, let him turn to Macaulay's Essays, 1. 379-81. In his Enquiry into Polite Learning, Tauchn. ed. Chap. x.

1757.

any

from the house of commons into upon him. To become author its lobbies and waiting-rooms, was to be treated as adventurer: and ordered to exchange the a man had only to write, to be honours of the council-table for classed with what Johnson the comforts of the great man's calls the lowest of all human kitchen. beings, the scribbler for Et. 29. The order did not of necessity party. One of Fielding's remake the man of genius a ser- marks, under cover of a grave vant or a parasite: upon him its sneer, conveys a bitter sense of sentence was simply that he must this injustice. "An author, in a descend in the social scale, and "country where there is no public peradventure starve. But though "provision for men of genius, is could not degrade the genuine "not obliged to be a more diswriter, it called writers into ex-"interested patriot than istence whose vices were a de-"other. Why is he, whose liveligradation to him; who lowered "hood is in his pen, a greater his pursuits, and made the name "monster in using it to serve of man-of-letters the synonyme "himself, than he who uses his for a dishonest hireling. Of the "tongue for the same purpose?"* fifty thousand pounds which the Nor was the injustice the work secret committee found to have of the vulgar or unthinking, for been expended by Walpole's it was strongest in the greatest ministry on daily scribblers for of living statesmen. If any one their daily bread, not a sixpence had told William Pitt that a new was received, either then or when man of merit, called Goldsmith, the Pelhams afterwards followed was about to try the profession of the example, by an author whose literature, he would have turned name is now enviably known. aside in scorn. It had been sufAll went to the Guthries, the ficient to throw doubt upon the Amhersts, the Arnalls, the Ralphs, career of Edmund Burke, that, and the Oldmixons; and while a in this very year, he opened it Mr. Cook was pensioned, a Harry Fielding solicited Walpole in vain. But not the less did his manly spirit What the man of genius reresent and denounce the shame brought by this class of men on the calling they ceived, unless the man of rank disgraced. "The malice I bore this felhad wisdom to adorn it by be-"low," says Fielding's poet of his confriending him, was nothing but temporary poet, "is inconceivable to any the shame of being confounded, as one who lived by using the pen, with those who lived by its prostitution and abuse.

"but an author, and an unsuccessful one.

"I never could bear to hear him well "spoken of; and I writ anonymous

66

satires against him, though I had re"ceived obligations from him." This is not an inapt quotation on the threshold It was in vain he strove to of Goldsmith's literary life, for he sufescape this imputation; it in-fered as much as any man, through the creased, and it fastened itself thus satirized by Fielding.

whole of it, from the kind of creature

with the writing of a book.* It types. Of the lower class, unwas Horace Walpole's vast sur- like that dignitary Mr. John Jackprise, four years later, that so son, still was Samuel Johnson; sensible a man as "young he was but a Grub-street man, 1757. "Mr. Burke" should not paid by the sheet, when GoldÆt. 29. have "worn off his au- smith entered Grub-street, pe"thorism yet. He thinks there riodical writer and reviewer. "is nothing so charming as Periodicals were the fashion of "writers, and to be one. He the day. They were the means "will know better one of these of those rapid returns, of that days."** perpetual interchange of bargain Such was the worldly account and sale, so fondly cared for by of Literature, when, as I have the present arbiters of literature; said, deserted by the patron and and were now, universally, the not yet supported by the public, favourite channel of literary specuit was committed to the mercies lation. Scarcely a week passed of the bookseller. They were in which a new magazine or few and rare. It was the mission paper did not start into life, to of Johnson to extend them, and perish or survive as might be. to replace the writer's craft, in Even Fielding had turned from even its worldliest view, on a his Jonathan Wild the Great, to his dignified and honourable basis; Jacobite's Journal and True Patriot; but Johnson's work was just be- and, from his Tom Jones and ginning. He was yet, as I have Amelia, sought refuge in his said, one of the meaner workers Covent Garden Journal. We have for hire; and though already the names of fifty-five papers of author of the Dictionary, was too the date of a few years before glad in this very year to have this, regularly published every Robert Dodsley's guinea for week. ** more important writing paragraphs in the London literary venture, in the nature of Chronicle. "Had you, sir, been a review, and with a title expres"an author of the lower class, sive of the fate of letters, the one of those who are paid by Grub-street Journal, had been the sheet," remonstrated worthy brought to a close in 1737. Six printer Bowyer with an author years earlier than that, for a who could pay, who did not need longer life, Cave had issued the to be paid, and who would not first number of the Gentleman's Mabe trifled with by the man of gazine. Griffiths, aided by Ralph, Kippis, Langhorne, Grainger, and others, followed with the earliest

66

*The Vindication of Natural Society, in

imitation of Lord Bolingbroke.

** Horace Walpole's Correspondence, (Ed. 1840; to which I shall in future refer as the Collected Letters of Walpole), IV. 160.

A

*Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (1812), 11. 530.

** See the curious and complete list in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, IV, 38-97,

1757.

Æt. 29.

regular Review which can be said smith's life to which I have now to have succeeded, and in 1749|arrived, another Review, the Unibegan, on whig principles, that versal, began a short existence of publication of the Monthly which three years, its principal lasted till our own day. Seven contributor being Samuel years later, the tories opposed it Johnson, at this time wholly with the Critical, which, with slight devoted to it. alteration of title, existed to a Such were a few of the exvery recent date, more strongly amples that, if the least liberty tainted with high-church advo- of choice had been his, might cacy and principles quasi-popish have raised or depressed the than when the first number, sent sanguine heart of Oliver Goldforth under the editorship of smith, when, under the watchSmollett in March 1756, was ful eye of Mr. and Mrs. Grifon those very grounds assailed.* fiths, now providers of his bed In the May of that year of Gold- and board, he sat down in the * The Critical Review, altered after-bookseller's parlour in Paterwards to the British Critic, became in still noster-row faced appropriately later years, for reasons connected with with the sign of The Dunciad, to its advocacy of extreme "Anglican" begin his engagement on the Monthly Review.

views, the Christian Remembrancer; under which title it is still published.

END OF BOOK THE FIRST.